Hoi An

A four hour bus ride on Saturday took us down the coast through a couple of beachy resorts to Hoi An - a sleepy wee town with a large french influence in the architecture - both the streets and the buildings - and much of the food. The roads are really a number of lanes around the town, and are wide, with many beautiful buildings and pipe music playing down from a few speakers outside buildings. Hoi An is a tailors town - 600 altogether - meaning that there is not a lot to do but shop shop shop. It is cheap and you can get whatever you want - but not always without issues. We shopped primarily at a large tailors with masses of material and a couple of hundred tailors and it was certainly an interesting experience. Grant had a reasonably easy time with a couple of fittings and a number of suits and shirts that fit him well and look great. Unfortunately I was not so lucky. You would never believe it - but, apparently, I have the most difficult body shape to fit into a suit that you have ever come across (it must be the rather large barge ass from all of the rice and noodles we have consumed over here!) which meant 5 or 6 fittings, three different tailors and actually even getting the tailors to come down and survey me on a number of different occasions. Way to make a girl feel sensitive. And all of this was made more difficult by the lack of power throughout Vietnam for 12 or so hours due to Typhoon Chanchu. Despite this (extremely frustrating, hot, sweaty and time consuming), I did leave with a large number of tailored clothes all fitting perfectly! We also tried a few other stores around the town and found that some of the smaller tailors were far more efficient and better than the larger ones. There's a lesson for you. Amazing, but at one of my fittings, we ran into an old friend from law school, Lottie, who is travelling by herself through Asia. It was really great to see her and she joined us for dinner and a night out in Hoi An. It's strange to just bump into people in a completely different setting - but so fun! We spent our evenings in Hoi An at a bar called Tam Tams which was, again, very french-like, playing pool (we seem to do that a lot over here - and you'd think that we'd get better at it...but no!) until it closed at 11.30 and then one night, headed down to a beach party - plenty of beach, a little less party - on motorbikes (see fantastic pics - us and friends Dina and Steve) and another night, headed to Full Moon Bar on motorbikes - which was really a garage at the back of someones house in rural Hoi An with some random flashing lights and, of course, a pool table. It has been amazing having a boozey tour leader who knows all of the great haunts of each of the places we visit as we are really getting to experience some real Vietnam (even though mildly touristy!). We also ate at the most fantastic place - Balle Well - which was pretty much a street vendor with tiny plastic chairs and tables in a back alley of town. They served spring rolls with salad, chicken on skewers and omelettes that you rolled yourself - that is, if the very friendly (hugs all round) waitress didn't take your plate, roll it for you and force it down your throat. It was delicious and we would recommend it to anyone!